The first few days were glorious. We spent hours on the beach, overwhelmed by the heat and gradually acquiring a healthy golden tan, except for Elsa, who was having a terrible time, going red and peeling. My father worked through various complicated leg exercises with the aim of getting rid of a small paunch that did not suit his image as a lady-killer. I was in the water from dawn. It was cool, clear water and I would get thoroughly immersed in it and tire myself out with uncoordinated exertions in an attempt to wash away all the murk and dust of Paris. I would stretch out on the sand, take up a handful and then let it trickle through my fingers in a gentle yellow stream. I told myself that it was trickling away like time, and that it was facile to think like that and that it was pleasant having facile thoughts. It was summertime.
On the sixth day I saw Cyril for the first time. He was hugging the coast in a little sailing boat and he capsized at the mouth of our inlet. I helped him rescue his belongings and, as we laughed together, I learnt that he was called Cyril, that he was a law student and that he was spending his holidays with his mother in a neighbouring villa. He had a typically Latin face, very brown, very open, and he had a sensible, reliable look about him that I immediately liked. Yet I normally avoided university students, whom I considered to be coarse and preoccupied with themselves and, above all, preoccupied with their own youth: to them just being young was a drama in itself, or an excuse for being bored. I did not like young people. I much preferred my father’s friends, men of forty, who spoke to me with courtesy and affection, and treated me with the gentleness of a father or lover. But I liked Cyril. He was tall and could sometimes appear handsome, with a type of handsomeness that inspired confidence. I did not share my father’s aversion to ugliness, which often led us to associate with stupid people. Even so, whenever I was faced with people who were without any physical charm, I experienced a sort of uneasiness, a sense of remoteness; the fact that they were resigned to being unattractive struck me as being an unseemly failing on their part. For, after all, what was our aim in life, if not to be attractive to others? I still do not know today whether this desire to captivate stems from a surfeit of energy, or whether what lies behind it is a desire to control, or a covert, unacknowledged need to feel reassured and confirmed in oneself.
On departing, Cyril offered to teach me to sail. I went back in for dinner quite absorbed in thinking about him, and I took little or no part in the conversation; indeed I barely noticed that my father was agitated. After dinner we stretched out on reclining chairs on the terrace, as we did every evening. The sky was studded with stars. I gazed up at them, vaguely hoping that they would be in advance of the season and would begin to fall, streaking through the sky. But it was only the beginning of July, too early for shooting stars. In the gravel of the terrace the cicadas were singing. There must have been thousands of them, drunk with the heat and the moonlight, uttering that strange cry of theirs all night long. I had had it explained to me that all they were doing was rubbing one outer wing against the other, but I preferred to believe in a song coming from their throats, as guttural and instinctive as the call of cats in the mating season. We were completely at ease; all that prevented me from succumbing to the gentle onslaught of sleep were the tiny grains of sand between my skin and my blouse. It was at that point that my father gave a little cough and sat up on his recliner.
‘I’ve news for you,’ he said. ‘Someone is coming to stay.’
I closed my eyes in despair. We were having too peaceful a time of it, it just couldn’t last!
‘Quick, tell us who it is!’ exclaimed Elsa, who was always keen to hear about what was going on socially.
‘It’s Anne Larsen,’ said my father, and he turned to face me.
I just looked at him, too astonished to react.
‘I told her to come if her season’s collections left her exhausted and, well, she’s coming.’
I would never have thought it. Anne Larsen had been an old friend of my mother’s and had had very little to do with my father. Even so, when I had left boarding school two years previously, my father, having no idea what to do with me, had packed me off to her. Within a week she had dressed me tastefully and had given me some lessons in life. As a result I had become imbued with a passionate admiration for her, which she had skilfully deflected on to a young man of her acquaintance. So it was to her that I owed my introduction to elegance and my first flirtation, and I was most grateful to her for that. At forty-two she was a very attractive woman, much sought-after, with a beautiful face that was proud, world-weary and aloof. This aloofness was the only thing that could be held against her. She was pleasant yet distant. Everything about her denoted an unwavering will and a serenity that was actually intimidating. Although she was divorced and, in that sense, free, she was not known to have lovers. In any case, we did not move in the same circles: she spent her time with people who were sharp, intelligent and discreet, whereas the people we spent time with were noisy and insatiable – all that my father asked of them was that they be either good-looking or amusing. I think she rather despised us – my father and me – because of our fondness for entertainment and frivolity, in the same way that she despised anything taken to extremes. The only things that connected us were business dinners (she worked in fashion and my father in advertising), the memory of my mother and my own efforts to keep in touch, for, even though she intimidated me, I greatly admired her. In short, her sudden arrival seemed somewhat inconvenient, bearing in mind Elsa’s presence and Anne’s views on education.
After asking a host of questions about Anne’s social standing, Elsa went up to bed. I remained alone with my father and came and sat on the steps, at his feet. He leant forward and placed his hands on my shoulders.
‘Why are you so skinny, my pet? You look like a little wildcat. I’d rather have a beautiful, blonde-haired daughter, quite buxom, with china-blue eyes and …’
‘That’s not the issue,’ I said. ‘Why have you invited Anne? And why has she accepted?’
‘Maybe she wants to see your old father. You never know.’
‘You’re not the type of man that Anne is interested in,’ I said. ‘She’s too intelligent, she has too much self-respect. And what about Elsa? Have you thought of her? Can you imagine the conversations Anne and Elsa would have? I can’t!’
‘I didn’t think of that,’ he confessed. ‘I admit it’s a horrifying thought. Cécile, my pet, what if we just went back to Paris?’
He was laughing softly and rubbing the back of my neck. I turned to look at him. His dark eyes were gleaming. They had funny little wrinkles round the edges and his mouth turned up slightly. He looked like a faun. I began to laugh along with him, as I always did when he created complications for himself.
‘My old accomplice,’ he said. ‘What would I do without you?’
And I knew, from the conviction and tenderness in his voice, that without me he would have been unhappy. Late into the night we talked of love and its complications. In my father’s eyes these were purely imaginary. He categorically rejected all notions of fidelity, earnestness or commitment, explaining to me that they were arbitrary and sterile. Coming from anyone else, these views would have shocked me. But I knew that, in his case, they did not rule out either tenderness or devotion, these being feelings which he entertained all the more readily because he believed them to be, indeed knew they were, transient. I was greatly attracted to the concept of love affairs that were rapidly embarked upon, intensely experienced and quickly over. At the age I was, fidelity held no attraction. I knew little of love, apart from its trysts, its kisses and its lethargies.
Two
Anne was not due to arrive for another week. I made the most of those last few days of real holiday. We had rented the villa for two months but I knew that, as soon as Anne arrived, complete relaxation would no longer be possible. Anne gave things a certain shape and words a certain sense that my father and I preferred to disregard. She set the standards for good taste and discretion an
d you couldn’t help detecting what these were in her sudden withdrawals, her lapses into pained silence or her use of particular expressions. It was both energizing and exhausting, and ultimately it was humiliating, because I sensed that she was right.
On the day of her arrival it was decided that my father and Elsa would go to meet her at the station in Fréjus.2 I categorically refused to take part in the expedition. In desperation my father picked all the gladioli in the garden to be able to present them to her as she got off the train. I merely advised him not to get Elsa to carry the bouquet. Once they had gone, at three o’clock, I went down to the beach. It was oppressively hot. I stretched out on the sand and fell half asleep, only to be woken by the sound of Cyril’s voice. I opened my eyes: in the heat, the sky was a white blur. I made no reply to Cyril; I did not want to talk to him or anyone else. The strength of that summer heat kept me pinioned to the sand, with arms that felt heavy and a dry mouth.
‘Are you dead?’ he asked. ‘From a distance you looked abandoned, like a piece of flotsam.’
I smiled. He sat down beside me and my heart began to beat with a dull thud because, in sitting down, he had brushed my shoulder with his hand. A dozen times in the previous week my brilliant maritime manoeuvres had thrown us entwined together right into the water without my feeling remotely disturbed. But today all it took was that heat and my drowsiness and his clumsy movement for something within me to come gently adrift. I turned to face him. He was looking at me. I was beginning to get to know him: he was sensible and more virtuous than perhaps was usual for someone of his age. That was why our family situation – I mean, the odd threesome that we formed – was shocking to him. He was either too kind or too shy to tell me so, but I sensed it in the resentful sidelong glances he cast at my father. He would have liked me to be tormented by the situation. But I wasn’t; the only things tormenting me just then were his looking at me and the thumping of my heart. He leant towards me. I had a vision of the last few days of the week just gone, recalling the sense of trust and the serenity I had experienced in his company, and I felt a pang of regret as his wide, rather full mouth came close.
‘Cyril,’ I said, ‘we were so happy …’
He kissed me gently. I looked up at the sky. Then, eyes tight shut, I saw under my lids only bursts of red light. Long minutes passed, filled with heat, giddiness, the taste of our first kisses and our amorous sighs. The sound of a car horn caused us to separate as if we were being caught red-handed. I left Cyril without a word and went back up towards the house. I was astonished at the thought of their having got back so soon, since Anne’s train was not due to have arrived yet. But I found her on the terrace just getting out of her own car.
‘This is like the house of Sleeping Beauty!’ she exclaimed. ‘How brown you are, Cécile! I’m so pleased to see you.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘But have you just come all the way from Paris?’
‘I decided to drive here and now I’m exhausted.’
I showed her to her room. I opened the window in the hope of catching sight of Cyril’s boat but it had disappeared. Anne had sat down on the bed. I noticed the little shadows round her eyes.
‘This is a gorgeous villa,’ she said, breathing a sigh. ‘Where is the master of the house?’
‘He’s gone to fetch you at the station with Elsa.’
I had put her case down on a chair and, turning back in her direction, I received a shock. Her face had suddenly crumpled and her mouth was trembling.
‘Elsa Mackenbourg? He’s brought Elsa Mackenbourg here?’
I could think of nothing to say by way of reply. I looked at her, dumbfounded. That face of hers, which I had only ever seen so calm and controlled, now lay open to my astonished scrutiny. She was staring at me through the fog of images that my words had conjured up for her. At length she actually saw me and she turned her head away.
‘I should have let you know in advance,’ she said, ‘but I was in such a hurry to get away, I was so tired …’
‘And now …’ I continued mechanically.
‘Now what?’ she said.
She was looking at me in a disdainful, interrogatory way, as if nothing had happened.
‘Now you’ve arrived,’ I said lamely, rubbing my hands together, ‘I’m very pleased you’re here, I really am. I’ll wait for you downstairs; if you’d like a drink, the bar has everything.’
I stammered my way out of the room and went down the stairs with my thoughts in a whirl. Why had she looked like that? Why that troubled voice and that faltering of hers? I sat down on a recliner and closed my eyes. I tried to remember Anne’s many faces, faces that had looked severe or reassuring, that had expressed irony, effortlessness or authority. I was both touched and irritated at having, for the first time, seen her appear vulnerable. Could it be that she loved my father? Was it even possible for her to love him? There was nothing about him that matched her tastes. He was weak-willed, frivolous, at times supine. But perhaps she was simply tired after her journey or filled with moral indignation. I spent an hour surmising.
At five o’clock my father arrived back with Elsa. I watched him get out of the car. I tried to work out whether Anne could ever love him. He walked briskly towards me with his head tilted back a little. He was smiling. I decided that it was quite possible for Anne to love him, indeed for anyone to love him.
‘Anne wasn’t there,’ he called to me. ‘I hope she hasn’t fallen out of the train.’
‘She’s in her room,’ I said. ‘She came by car.’
‘Really? But that’s wonderful! Would you mind just taking the bouquet up to her?’
‘Did you buy me flowers?’ called Anne’s voice. ‘That’s too kind of you!’
She was making her way downstairs to meet him, relaxed and smiling, in a dress that gave no appearance of having just been unpacked. I was sad to think that she had come down only on hearing the car, when she might have done so a little sooner to talk to me, even if it had only been about my exam, which, as it happened, I had failed. I drew some comfort from that last consideration.
My father, having rushed forward, was kissing her hand.
‘I spent a quarter of an hour on the station platform clutching this bunch of flowers with a silly smile on my face. Thank heavens you’re here! Do you know Elsa Mackenbourg?’
I looked away.
‘We must have met somewhere,’ said Anne, all charm. ‘My room is lovely. It’s extremely kind of you to have invited me here, Raymond. I was very tired.’
My father was in high spirits. As he saw it, everything was going well. He was talking extravagantly and opening bottles. But I kept seeing Cyril’s passionate face alternating with that of Anne’s, both faces marked by intense emotion, and I wondered if the holidays would be as straightforward as my father had said they would be.
That first dinner was very lively. My father and Anne talked about their mutual acquaintances who, although few in number, were colourful characters. I was enjoying it all very much until Anne declared that my father’s business partner had the brain of a flea. This was someone who drank a lot, but he was kind, and my father and I had had some memorable dinners with him.
I protested, saying: ‘Lombard is funny, Anne. I’ve seen him be very amusing.’
‘Even so, you must admit that he’s inadequate, and even his humour …’
‘His type of intelligence isn’t perhaps very common but …’
She interrupted me patronizingly:
‘What you call types of intelligence quite simply amounts to normal intelligence at different ages.’
I was very taken by the elegant finality of her formulation. Certain phrases strike me as having a subtle, intellectual resonance that I find captivating, even if I cannot entirely fathom their meaning. What Anne had just stated made me want to have a little notebook and pencil to hand. I told her so. My father burst out laughing.
‘At least you don’t bear grudges.’
I couldn’t possibly do that, fo
r Anne was not malicious. I felt that she was too utterly aloof to be malicious; the judgements she passed did not have the precise, cutting edge of spite. But they were all the more crushing for it.
That first evening Anne did not seem to notice Elsa’s absent-mindedness, whether feigned or not, in going straight to my father’s bedroom. She had brought me a sweater from her collection but would hear no word of thanks. She was bored by expressions of thanks, and as mine were never equal to my actual enthusiasm for a particular gift, I did not waste my breath.
‘I think Elsa is very sweet,’ she said, as I was about to leave.
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 2